Perfect Song: "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls With Whitmer Thomas

Whitmer Thomas ('Terminal Crew of Dudes,' 'Weapons') joins Yasi to break down "Iris," the Goo Goo Dolls hit that became one of the defining songs of the late ’90s. They discuss the song’s origins on the 'City of Angels' soundtrack, the band’s punk beginnings, John Rzeznik’s singular and deeply inspiring (to Whitmer) hairstyle, and that iconic, rain-drenched performance of "Iris" in their hometown of Buffalo that somehow made a perfect song even more perfect. Subscribe on YouTube CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Whitmer Thomas @whitmerthomas Producer: Rob Sundermann Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way. Because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 0:30Yasi Salek?

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain?

• 0:42Yasi Salek?

  Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever. I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:10Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. But today's show is a little bit different. Today's episode is about one perfect song, and my guest is a celebrity. The song is "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and the celebrity is Whitmer Thomas, an LA-based comedian and musician who just put out his second comedy special for HBO. You guys heard about the Home Box Office? It is called Terminal Crew of Dudes. Welcome to the show, Whit.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Thank you, Yasi.

• 1:42Yasi Salek?

  Is it okay if I call you Whit?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I'd prefer that. I've tried to professionally change my name to Whit, and it's a no-go, but...

• 1:48Yasi Salek?

  I'm really into Whitmer because I don't know any other soul on this earth with that name. Do you know other people with that name? Is that a common Alabama name? Oh, you're a second.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Not quite. My name is Whitmer Alexander Thomas, and his name is Whitmer A. Thomas. They didn't bother to...

• 2:05Yasi Salek?

  Just A.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so...

• 2:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  But it's hard. It's hard. People panic every time they try to say it.

• 2:12Yasi Salek?

  Whitmer? My name is Yassim.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, but...

• 2:15Yasi Salek?

  I guess that's... We both had it rough in a different, in a different way. This episode is brought to you by Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing. If you saw the band when they played at the bar, or stopped mid-festival to look at the stars, then you're ready to embrace the haze with Hazy Little Thing. Citrussy-smooth and easy to drink, it pairs with nights that don't need a script. Brewed with the purest ingredients for finest quality, there's a reason it's America's best-selling hazy IPA. Embrace the haze with Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing. Enjoy responsibly.

• 2:51Yasi Salek?

  Whit, to prepare for this, I watched both specials.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  No way!

• 2:55Yasi Salek?

  Well, I wanted to, like, you know...

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Me and Yasi are friends. If nobody... If people listening might not know that, and she puts a lot of work into this, so it means a lot to me as her friend that people listen to this.

• 3:07Yasi Salek?

  Let's just get it out of the way. We'll get it out of the way right now. I used to do stand-up comedy. Okay, I'm not proud of it. I'm actually deeply ashamed of it. But that's how I got to meet a lot of wonderful people, such as my friend Whit Thomas over here.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. My dad... She... Yasi had a great show, and she was a great stand-up. And one time I brought my dad to one of her shows, and afterwards, he said, "Dude, that was so funny." And I think it's so funny how all of these women talk about shaving their pussy.

• 3:33Yasi Salek?

  That's literally... My comedy was about my bush. And then I get to go meet Whit's dad, and he's like, "I loved that." And I was like... So grand. Fab, fabulous. But you're very funny, and you're still doing it, so I think that's wonderful.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:48Yasi Salek?

  And doing it clearly to a very high level.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:51Yasi Salek?

  One thing that is not about Terminal Crew of Dudes, but about The Golden One. How's your cousin? I became a little more... I'd seen Golden One when it came out, but then the re-watch, I became really fixated on your cousin, and the glasses on the back of his neck, and there was a deer in his house wearing a hat. And just like, everything about him was very mesmerizing to me. I just wanted to know how he is.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  He's great. He just won a marlin fishing competition.

• 4:17Yasi Salek?

  Hell, yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  And he's just living his best life down there. He's got a beautiful son. Shout out Wilks and Steel. I don't think they're gonna listen to this, but...

• 4:28Yasi Salek?

  Those are really good names.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, Wilks Hammack. Look him up.

• 4:31Yasi Salek?

  Hammack?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:32Yasi Salek?

  Like a...

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Yep. Spelled the same. Watch his fishing videos, set to Creed songs. He's just a great guy. Love him to death.

• 4:40Yasi Salek?

  This is fabulous. For those of you that don't know, Whit is from northern, southern Alabama?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Gulf shores in Alabama. Floribama line.

• 4:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Terminal Crew of Dudes was really good, I gotta say. Normally, I don't enjoy musical comedy. I'll be honest with you. You're...

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Neither do I.

• 4:56Yasi Salek?

  But yours was really funny.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:59Yasi Salek?

  And I loved the celebration of friendship. It was a real dudes-rock situation. I really liked your friend Jeremy, who wore the sunglasses and the hood the whole time, who did not want to be perceived.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  He didn't want to be part of it at all.

• 5:11Yasi Salek?

  You made him.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I made him and my brother be a part of it.

• 5:15Yasi Salek?

  Your brother seemed like he was, like, having a ball, though.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  You know, he was supposed to say stuff and sing stuff with me. And the day of, he was like, "Get the microphone away from me. I don't want to say anything, and I don't want to sing. I'm too nervous."

• 5:30Yasi Salek?

  Why do you think you're the one in your family that was... Well, I guess it's because for your mom, right? Like, you're the... You have the performer DNA, because your mom was a musician and a performer.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Definitely. I mean, my brother's in a great band called Rufus McBlack.

• 5:43Yasi Salek?

  Hell, yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  But it's a different genre of music. It's really heavy, and I think he can hide behind a bit of that wall of sound.

• 5:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  And so that's probably why he was a little shy. But I think we just grew up watching our mom play all the time, and we didn't really have a choice. Like, my brother was a pretty naturally kind of gifted guitar player right out the gate. And then my mom, like, bought me a bass when I was nine or 10, and my brother taught me Pennywise songs and Blink-182 songs. Yeah, so...

• 6:18Yasi Salek?

  And then we're here. Do you remember Power Violence?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:22Yasi Salek?

  Was that your... Was that what it was called?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:24Yasi Salek?

  Whit had a show called Power Violence at... Satellite?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:28Yasi Salek?

  Is that what it's called now? No, it's changed.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  It's gone now.

• 6:31Yasi Salek?

  But it was...

• 6:31Speaker 02

  It was called The Saturn.

• 6:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  No, it was called...

• 6:35Yasi Salek?

  It was called some...

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Spaceland.

• 6:36Yasi Salek?

  It was called Spaceland, then it became The Satellite?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:38Yasi Salek?

  And now it's gone. And you and Bud...

• 6:43Speaker 02

  And Clay.

• 6:43Yasi Salek?

  And Clay played music and did comedy, and had other people come do comedy.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:50Yasi Salek?

  And I feel like I saw your Blink-182 cover band there once.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Oh, with Mark?

• 6:54Yasi Salek?

  With Mark.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  That's so... That was the best night of my life.

• 6:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I could tell it was the best night. It was a really good night of my life, too, and I wasn't even onstage.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And for the backstory there is that I used to do a joke about Blink, and Mark saw it somehow. And, like, on Twitter or something, like a video, or maybe there was an article about it. And then he reached out and thought it was funny. Our friend Jonah Ray and him were like, "Well, it'd be funny to interrupt the show and actually play the song." And we did.

• 7:22Yasi Salek?

  That's so cool.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  It was "Miss You." We played "Miss You."

• 7:25Yasi Salek?

  You've had a good run.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:26Yasi Salek?

  And it's only... It's only just going, going off right now. You want to talk a little bit about your music? And then we can get into the iris of it all, because you actually make music earnestly, right, as well?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  Like, you put out an EP.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've put out earnest music, definitely. I mean, now, I don't ever want to write another comedy song in my life.

• 7:46Yasi Salek?

  No, you're done. You leave that to Bo Burnham.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Leave it to him.

• 7:49Yasi Salek?

  He's cornered the market, yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's too hard. My... I don't know how to write a broad enough song. You know? And it's the same thing with my stand-up. Like, I cannot do an observational joke. I just simply don't know how.

• 8:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yours are just about, like, jacking off with your mom.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 8:05Yasi Salek?

  Very specific.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  And so if I post that, then people are like, "Who's his mom?" Or if, like... Well, I'm in the thick of it right now, because HBO's like, "What's..." We're trying to figure out what jokes to clip out, but you keep mentioning your friends' names and stuff. It's like a Saves the Day song. You know Saves the Day? That he'll be like, "And I said, Dave." And as a kid, I was like, "Who's Dave?"

• 8:26Yasi Salek?

  Who's Dave? I can't get into this world.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  But yeah, I don't want to write another comedy song. It's just simply too hard.

• 8:32Yasi Salek?

  Just regular songs? Your last EP was produced by J. Som. And this house, we love J. Som.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  The best.

• 8:39Yasi Salek?

  Pretty sick.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  She's incredible, so talented.

• 8:41Yasi Salek?

  So check out Whit's music, as well as Terminal Crew of Dudes. Also, you might have noticed, he was the dad in Weapons. It's not a big deal. This is an Oscar-nominated film.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, pretty cool.

• 8:54Yasi Salek?

  I think I didn't know when I went... When I saw the film, for some reason. I was... I saw it on a plane. I'm so sorry I didn't make it to the theater. And I was like... I know that guy.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's cool. You noticed. I've had friends go and watch it and not know that that was me. And then afterwards be talking to me about the movie and I would be like, oh yeah, when we filmed that. And they're like, what are you talking about?

• 9:13Yasi Salek?

  It was pretty obviously you.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Sometimes people are, for me, are hair blind, where if I comb my hair a certain way, they go, they don't know it's me.

• 9:22Yasi Salek?

  I think you have a pretty distinctive face.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  That's nice of you to say.

• 9:25Yasi Salek?

  You're welcome. Um, okay. Wait.

• 9:31Yasi Salek?

  Tell me why you chose Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls as your perfect song for us to cover on this podcast?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Well, at first I was thinking of cool, like cool band songs. I can have all these Silver Jews songs in my head and.

• 9:45Yasi Salek?

  For full transparency, Whit sent a list and I chose Iris out of the list. It was number one on your list. I don't know if that was ranked or not, but.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Well, I thought a lot about that list and uh, I stumbled onto Iris because I watched that video, the Buffalo performance in the rain. And I was shown my friend who's going through a tough time. And he started like choking back tears. And uh, we were talking about it and realized there's all kinds of weird things about that song, like.

• 10:21Yasi Salek?

  Musically, I mean.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it is a song, one of the rare songs where I remember where I was sitting when I watched the video. And it's the lyrically, it's perfect. And I, I really think it might be like top five best songs ever written.

• 10:39Yasi Salek?

  Lyrically, it's broad comedy, like you were talking about, very applicable to anybody.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it is truly a perfect song. I'm right there with you. Um, the video you guys, he's referring to is the Goo Goo Dolls playing live in Buffalo, New York in 2004, and it's pouring rain. And Johnny Rez busts out this acoustic guitar and it is, I think it's part of the fabric of my DNA at this point. I think if you cut me up and that would pop out because I've watched it so many times. It's like a blanket, a warm blanket.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And it's that good, hard rain.

• 11:12Yasi Salek?

  Not to like, I was like, how are they not get electrocuted?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  I was thinking the same thing.

• 11:16Yasi Salek?

  There's, and the whole crowd is like, they have like umbrellas and like rain jackets.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And if you, I've, I've dug through those comments and some, there's one that's from like a young guy, kid maybe, who's like, my parents met at this show and were in the audience. Oh my God, it's just, it's such a good video.

• 11:36Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  But watching that is what made me realize like, there's a super long instrumental, I don't even think there's a final, oh, I know there is, but there's a crazy instrumental break in the song.

• 11:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  With a weird guitar solo. I mean, it's so interesting.

• 11:52Yasi Salek?

  And I can't wait to talk about this song and like the journey it went on from being written to becoming that. Um, not all songs have that much to talk about. Do you know what I mean? Like sometimes I was just like, this guy wrote it and it's awesome. And so it wouldn't really make a good podcast episode. Um, but this one serves the dual purpose of A, being like a fucking smash hit. I think it has like five and a half billion streams on, on streaming and also have like a remarkably interesting backstory and like musical story.

• 12:31Yasi Salek?

  This episode of Bands Plane is presented by Sierra Nevada. Life's about embracing the haze. What does that mean? Living in the moment, seeing where the night takes you, being up for the adventure. And there's no better way to embrace it than with Hazy Little Thing by Sierra Nevada. Hazy, citrusy, smooth, juicy, but not sweet, hoppy, but not bitter. America's best selling hazy IPA for good reason. Hazy little thing. Enjoy responsibly.

• 13:07Yasi Salek?

  Top line, this song was written explicitly for the film, the 1998 film City of Angels, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, a remake of the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. I rewatched City of Angels this morning.

• 13:26Yasi Salek?

  It's not a good film though.

• 13:28Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I have like a soft spot for it because I watched it when I was young and also it gave us Iris, as well as Alanis Morissette's Uninvited, which is another Goo Tear song. But I just can't take Nicolas Cage seriously and the role of Seth the Angel. His name is Seth.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  An angel named Seth is very funny.

• 13:44Yasi Salek?

  Bruv.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Any person named Seth, you just can't take seriously.

• 13:47Yasi Salek?

  We really can't. And he's just like, kind of.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's doing a lot of standing and looking.

• 13:53Yasi Salek?

  Just like mooning, you know?

• 13:55Speaker 02

  It was probably an easy part to play, not a lot of lines to memorize.

• 14:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a rough angle about this movie. Um, the, the Wim Wenders one is phenomenal.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  It's beautiful. And they got Nick Cave in that one.

• 14:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, on all levels and Peter fucking Falk, Columbo is in.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And he's playing himself.

• 14:13Yasi Salek?

  He's playing himself. That also just like the, besides the fact that it's just visually more beautiful, the plot of Wings of Desire is like much better. Although, did I cry in the beginning and end of City of Angels? Yes, I'm only human.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's like a song where you would, where I would like be walking in the kitchen to get like a pop tart and I'd see my mom sobbing, like watching the movie.

• 14:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally. You can't, I mean, like they, it's like cheap because they're like, okay, we're gonna start this off by killing a kid. Okay, what am I? I'm only fucking human. And then, you know, the ending spoiler alert for a film that came out, something almost 20 years ago, then like the woman that he fell to earth to be with, dies right away. They had one day together.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 14:59Yasi Salek?

  Fucked up. Before we get to the song though, I want to do a quick Goo Goo Dolls TLDR. So let's just paint the picture of the Goo Goo Dolls.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Great.

• 15:09Yasi Salek?

  This band is from Buffalo. The original lineup, Johnny Resnick, Robbie Taccac. They were childhood best friends. Um, and a guy named George Tutuska, Tutuska. They called their band The Sex Maggots, 1985. It's kind of a good name.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 15:30Yasi Salek?

  It's a little, it's a little evocative. In a bad way, but it's like, they were a punk band.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Right. It's a band name where they're thinking, ah, we'll be together for three weeks.

• 15:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And, and they're, and they're literally like a hardcore punk band. They were not trying to be.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Even those first Goo Goo Dolls records are like replace, the Replacements.

• 15:47Yasi Salek?

  Even the very first one is like, you can't, it's not on streaming. I think you can, you have to go on YouTube or whatever. But that's like, just, it could have been on like fat records. It's like not even replacementsy yet. They haven't even like gotten a melodic sensibility yet. They're just playing like kind of shitty, pop punk adjacent music. Um, they called themselves the Goo Goo Dolls because they had to, I guess, play a show. And the show was like, they were like, we're not printing Sex Maggot on the flyer, so you're gonna have to.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Sounds bad, right?

• 16:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They got signed to a label called Mercenary Records that was picked up by another label called Celluloid Records. Never heard of these. Um, they had songs called like, Don't Beat My Ass With A Baseball Bat. That's early Goo Goo Dolls. And they would, one of the most interesting things for me is that they opened for so many legends, like Dag Nasty, Motorhead, The Dead Milkmen, like The Gun Club, like all these like really amazing like eighties and nineties, like hardcore punk bands. They opened for all of them in Buffalo, Necros.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  Second album, Jed, like you said, more trying to be kind of, you know, between punk and, and power pop. And then the third album starts to have glimmers, I feel like of genius, because Two Days In February is a fucking banger. I don't know if you're familiar with that song. It's really good. You guys, it's really good. Um, it's, you really, you start to hear the like, power pop replacementsy Johnny Resnick thing, because he's so brilliant. He didn't even sing on the first album. And then that kind of slowly came later. They get college play around here. In 1991, they had their first soundtrack placement, so it wasn't City of Angels. It was Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare. And the song was even better, babe. Um, I'm Awake Now. I don't know it.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Arguably one of the better Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

• 17:35Yasi Salek?

  The thing about me is I don't watch many horror movies, so I don't know that, but I, I defer to you and I trust you.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  It's really good.

• 17:41Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare. Is it the last one?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  No, I'm thinking of New Nightmare. No, that's not a good one. That's not a good one at all.

• 17:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay. So keeping in line with their songs being in bad movies. Um, Superstar Car Wash came out in 93. By this point, they're on Metal Blade records.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 17:58Yasi Salek?

  I know. Isn't that interesting?

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Wait, Metal Blade eventually was like Poison The, a lot of the bands I grew up listening to.

• 18:04Yasi Salek?

  Totally. They had like a deal with Warner Brothers. Um, I'm pretty sure. So at this album, there's a co-write with Paul Westerberg. It's called We Are The Normal. Johnny Resnick really loved The Replacements. It's a pretty good song. This, this song like got on 120 minutes and like more college play. You know what? I take it back. They did have a song on a good movie. 1993's Son In Law starring Pauly Shore.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:29Yasi Salek?

  It's a good movie.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Very special movie.

• 18:30Yasi Salek?

  It's a really special movie. 1993 is also the year they put out their kind of borderline, that's kind of their breakthrough. A Boy Named Goo. That's the album that has name on it. Name arguably also a perfect song.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, there's a great video of him playing that live too. He's got super long hair. He's like sitting on a couch on some public access talk show.

• 18:52Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. That song is about Kennedy, the VJ. We don't have time to get into all that, but.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, I think I've listened to that.

• 18:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. A DJ at K-Rock, I'm pretty sure it was Kevin Weatherly, um, who later ran K-Rock for years. K-Rock, very near and dear to my heart, uh, is the one, I guess, that discovered that song and started giving it radio play. And that's how it got so big. At the time that we're gonna start talking about, they are, they had sued Metal Blade, it's a whole thing. They didn't get their money, but they had been like moved over to Warner's. Um, and they were getting ready to, or trying to write their next album, which would be Dizzy Up The Girl, but they have not written anything yet. And actually Johnny Resnick is having terrible writer's block. Did you get writer's block? Remember?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I do. I'm like, not a good writer, not a prolific writer at all. Like something has to happen to me. Oh, okay. I can tell that story. I don't know. People just go like, you know, like, what's, what's up with payphones or something?

• 19:53Yasi Salek?

  What's the deal? Poor nuts. So that's what's happening with the Goo Goo Dolls. On this other side, the legend Bob Cavalo has formed a new management company in 1994. Bob Cavalo, for those that don't know, at this point had done like 35 years of working in the industry. He managed the Love and Spoonful, Weather Report, most notably Prince.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Hmm, I know about that.

• 20:17Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a big deal, yeah. So he made this new company called Atlas Third Rail. He had a couple of partners in it. One was named Dawn Steele. She was a movie producer. She actually became the first ever female head of a like major studio. It was Columbia Pictures, pretty cool.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Was she the girl in the logo, holding up the?

• 20:42Yasi Salek?

  I feel like that's like someone, like a famous mythological person. I should know this. Is that so? I don't know who that is. Do you know who that is?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  No, I wish they'd make a movie about her.

• 20:52Yasi Salek?

  I feel really dumb.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  She's beautiful. One of my first crushes.

• 20:57Yasi Salek?

  Apparently not a, not a thing that is a reference, but it's just, they made it for the thing. It's called the Torch Lady.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Didn't even give her a name.

• 21:07Yasi Salek?

  No. Torch Lady. It's called sexism.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:13Yasi Salek?

  Okay. The other partner was Chuck Rovin, was Dawn Steele's husband.

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  He's produced the Dark Knight trilogy.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  It's a really good trilogy.

• 21:25Yasi Salek?

  Letterboxd, Top 4. And then a bunch of superhero movies, Man of Steel, Batman, Superman, Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and he also produced Oppenheimer. So he's, he's doing good. But at this point, and I guess none of that has actually happened.

• 21:39Yasi Salek?

  And they have this like pretty good client roster at Atlas Third Rail. Green Day, because Rob Cavalo, his son, had produced Dookie.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  Seal, the Goo Goo Dolls, Weezer, Kara's Flowers, which is the man that became Maroon 5, Savage Garden, and Alanis Morissette, amongst others.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:58Yasi Salek?

  Pretty cool. This is, I'm setting this up to, so we know why these artists are on this soundtrack. Is because this movie came through the partner of Bob Cavalo. And I guess they made this film, they had also made Angus. Have you ever seen Angus?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Angus, so good.

• 22:14Yasi Salek?

  The movie itself, not that good actually, but the soundtrack, god tier.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  I used to work at Active Skate Shop on Santa Monica Promenade.

• 22:21Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  And Angus worked at Urban Outfitters.

• 22:23Yasi Salek?

  The actor who played Angus. That's so dark.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  I didn't even think about it like that.

• 22:28Yasi Salek?

  You didn't?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  A movie star selling BDG jeans.

• 22:33Yasi Salek?

  Not BDG denim.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  I thought it was cool. It just could be like that. That's all I wanted.

• 22:39Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure he's happy.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And he's probably happier than I'll ever be.

• 22:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, same, honestly. Should I, should we go work at Urban Outfitters?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:46Yasi Salek?

  Are you guys hiring?

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  So they decided to make this movie. It's directed by Brad Silberson. Just, we already kind of talked about it, but the TLDR of the plot is, in Los Angeles, California, they moved this film to be set in Los Angeles. Seth is one of the many angels who watch over humans and protect them in unseen ways. His, his, his angel friend is named Cassiel, which is the same name as from Wings of Desire. Yada, yada, yada. Basically, he observes a surgeon, played by Meg Ryan, being just like an amazing doctor who cared about her patients, and falls in love with her. And is tormented by this love for her because he can't be a person and he's showing himself to her.

• 23:30Yasi Salek?

  And he meets another patient, this is the comp for the Peter Falk character, basically, who is like, I know you're here. And he's like, what? And he's like, I used to be an angel too.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's not the same as Peter Falk.

• 23:48Yasi Salek?

  It's not the same as Peter Falk. He's like, anyways, you can fall to earth and you can just give it all up and be with her. And he was like, okay. So he does it. And then he has to go to Lake Tahoe.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  This movie and Godfather 2, they're going to Lake Tahoe.

• 24:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're going to Lake Tahoe to find Maggie, Meg Ryan, character. Gets there, they have a beautiful evening together. She is hit by a truck and dies.

• 24:14Yasi Salek?

  It's rough.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  And what's the message? At least he got to feel real love and kiss lips.

• 24:19Yasi Salek?

  He says to Cassiel that he would do it all over again because one like minute with her and being able to touch and feel her is worth everything or whatever. And then in the end, he like runs into the ocean while all the angels are standing on the ocean watching him and they're black. They did look cool in those outfits.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Of course it looks, yeah. Matrix mode.

• 24:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but this movie sucks. Okay, so this movie must have sucked even worse when they first screened it because the studio is like, okay, we're gonna need some really good music for this movie, okay? Because this is not working. And so they hired this guy Danny Bramson to be the music supervisor. And he comes to, they all come to Bob because his partners made this film. They're like, you have this roster of artists, like, can you help us? And he's like, okay, sure. Tells his son, can you bring some of the lads, the artists, to see the film and see if we can get some original songs? So Rob Cavalo brings Alanis Morissette and Johnny Resnick and Robbie Takak, Takak, to screen the film. The next day, he gets a call from Johnny Resnick and he's like, okay, I sent you a demo.

• 25:24Yasi Salek?

  Can you believe?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  I can, from Johnny Resnick?

• 25:27Yasi Salek?

  But, but by seeing that film.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, okay, okay.

• 25:30Yasi Salek?

  I mean, he can too, but he had writer's block. It moved him so deeply.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Maybe he's just got really bad taste. He's like, I wonder what his thoughts are on Bohemian Rhapsody.

• 25:39Yasi Salek?

  One of the worst movies ever made. Should be buried in a vault. He did say later that he did not like City of Angels. There were a few conflicting interviews. I don't want to like put his shit out on Front Street, but in one of the interviews, he was like, oh, I'd never seen Wings of Desire, so I went to and rented a VHS and watched it. And the other one, he was like, Wings of Desire was so much better. Like, I couldn't believe it. And I was like, but you said you hadn't seen it. Anyways, doesn't matter. What matters is he went and wrote this demo. I want to say this about Rob Cavalo. I think I'm such a fan of him. I think that this, there's like a certain kind of producer that is a visionary like this, that can hear a demo. It's a totally almost different song, you know? It's not bad, but it's not a perfect song.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, the DNA's in there.

• 26:26Yasi Salek?

  Sure. It has the like, I'd give up forever to touch you. But like, the drumbeat is weird, like.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that weird ass drumbeat.

• 26:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like, it's, it's like it's a drum machine. It's, it's okay, you know, but Rob Cavalo heard it and was like, I hear greatness.

• 26:50Yasi Salek?

  And I'm not discounting Johnny Resnick's incredible songwriting, because I am such a fan. I think he's an incredible songwriter. But it's like the match made in heaven of this, this demo and this group with this producer, like, made something so awesome. Here's what Johnny Resnick said. I was thinking to myself, he was going through a divorce also. He was living in an LA hotel, going through a divorce. Little rock bots, you know, but also like had just, but just had a huge hit with name. So like an interesting juxtaposition of a place to be. And he was like, I was thinking to myself, this guy will give up his immortality just to feel all the horrible things that human beings feel, just to feel human. I actually know a ton of people who would do the opposite. They didn't have to feel. That was the moment that I knew what I would say to this person.

• 27:34Yasi Salek?

  You keep your mind and your heart open to get what's going on. That's the thing that becomes more difficult the older you get, to keep those two open. I just feel as human beings, we get a little bit more brutal as we get older. We don't bounce as well. I was in the room writing the song myself. Generally, the music always comes first and before the lyrics. So I jotted down a few lines that came to me and it just sort of built from there.

• 27:57Yasi Salek?

  Have you listened to the song Exploder episode about this song? I like how he does the thing where he like shows how he does, like when he writes a song, what he's like singing along to it. And it's like, he calls it like Bob Dylan mode, where he's like, har har har har har. He's just like saying stuff. Is that how you write songs?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  I should probably, that's maybe it would help the melodies out in my songs better. But no, I'm, I like think of a line and I try to figure out how to make it melodic and usually it isn't.

• 28:25Yasi Salek?

  I think that's a, that's a cool way to do it. That's how I always imagined songs were written because I was like such a lyric person and to come to find out later that that's not how it was, was really kind of disappointing for me.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I think better, more catchy songs are probably written by going, abababoo.

• 28:40Yasi Salek?

  Right, right, totally. Like this one. You're, you're a musician, so maybe you can help me understand this because I don't, I don't really get the guitar center of it all. He said two of the strings of his guitar were broken, right? And so he tuned all the other strings down to D?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:06Yasi Salek?

  And one, one B, three Ds and a B?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he plays this weird tuning. I, I don't know if he, I'm sure he didn't make, or maybe he made it up. I don't know. But that's why all of his songs have that like lush sound. It's like they almost sound doubled, like the guitars, but it's, because if you watch him play guitar, he often only has one string, one finger on the neck instead of like chord shapes.

• 29:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And it gives it that really unique Goo Goo Dolls kind of sound.

• 29:39Yasi Salek?

  And it's because he does these sort of bizarre tunings.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think he mostly sticks to some, it's some sort of open tuning in D. And I don't know if it came, I don't think it, I don't know where it came from, but it would make sense if he broke a couple of strings. I think Keith Richards kind of did a similar thing where.

• 30:00Yasi Salek?

  He's trying to adjust.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's missing a string and so he came up with the tuning that he plays all the songs on.

• 30:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  But it, it's such a distinct sound when you hear him start to strum that guitar.

• 30:11Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Rob Cavalo said something interesting, which I liked. He said that because Johnny Resnick looks such a genius, that his, his like vision of what he wants something to sound like is way more advanced than his fingers. So then to get that sound, he has to fuck with the tuning because he can hear it in his head and he's like, well, this guitar is not doing it. I gotta like get all weird mode with the tuning.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  I would never. I mean, the thought of even having to. I want to see if I can tune my guitar to be like, sound different and good at the same time. Like Adrian Lanker does that too from Big Feet. I'm like, okay, well, you clearly care a lot more than I could ever imagine. So that's good.

• 30:51Yasi Salek?

  What level of guitar player are you, would you say, from one to Joe Satriani?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Probably a.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  A two, three? I'm good enough at guitar to learn a song. And if I needed to figure out a solo, I could probably do it if you gave me a bunch of days.

• 31:12Yasi Salek?

  So you're maybe like a seven.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Out of 10?

• 31:15Yasi Salek?

  Out of Joe Satriani.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Which is what, a million?

• 31:18Yasi Salek?

  Let's say yes. 10,000.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, seven, that sounds right.

• 31:23Yasi Salek?

  So it's like you're mostly a power chord guy?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, chords.

• 31:26Yasi Salek?

  Just regular chords. Three chords in the truth.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yep, absolutely.

• 31:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay, fab. Johnny said this also. "I did a demo with a little drum machine, a little keyboard and some guitar on it. But Rob Cabal is one of those guys, there are no other producers out there now that are like that, where they hear the reach of a song, the potential. And Rob took it from the demo to what it became, and that's quite something." Do you know where the name came from? Tell me.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Didn't he just open a newspaper and it was there?

• 31:53Yasi Salek?

  It was the LA Weekly.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:55Yasi Salek?

  And it was, oh, this really brought me back. I used to get the LA Weekly every week when I was, since I was like 12, to look at shows, because that's where all the shows were listed.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  So cool. Better time.

• 32:07Yasi Salek?

  It was such a better time. And he saw a listing for a show by Iris De Mette, who's this like avant, I wouldn't say avant garde, but sort of like out there folk singer that has this like, really like kind of high, quavering voice. She comes from like a Pentecostal tradition, but she like did stuff with John Prine, so she's like really cool. Anyways, he saw that name and he was like, that's a beautiful name. I'll call it that.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 32:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He also said that Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness had just come out, and he was really into like how Billy Corgan does that a lot, where he like names songs, things that are not in the song.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:48Yasi Salek?

  Like Words or Bullet with Butterfly Wings, for example.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's brave. That's how you know you're like, you wrote a good song is, is people are just gonna figure it out. Instead of if someone's saying like, "I'm a little dumbass" over and over again in the chorus, people will go, "Little dumbass. Play a little dumbass."

• 33:07Yasi Salek?

  Play that "I'll Give Up Forever to Touch You" song, please.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, what would, would it be? There, there's so many good lines, it'd be hard.

• 33:15Yasi Salek?

  I know. "I don't wanna go home right now."

• 33:20Speaker 02

  "Don't want the world to see me."

• 33:22Yasi Salek?

  Can you play that "Don't Want the World to See Me" song? Nothing really lends itself to a title, though.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so they go to the studio, they're like, "I got money, let's make this song." Johnny Resnick said he had to take a singing lesson before, his first ever singing lesson for going to the studio, because the chorus, I guess, is like, he hits that kind of high note.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:45Yasi Salek?

  So this is interesting. It's exactly kind of what you said, but this is in my notes too. That, that tuning is how he makes it sound like a 12-string, I guess.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  It's got that lush kind of vibe. Another thing about his voice on this song, I got really into The Replacements about a decade ago, and I remember hearing an interview with him where he talks about The Replacements, and his voice really does sound like a very polished Paul Westerberg.

• 34:10Yasi Salek?

  Totally. It's not as ragged, yeah, as Paul Westerberg.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  But they sound really similar, and so it would make sense that they wrote a song together.

• 34:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but also the 12-string is totally a Paul Westerberg thing. He loves 12-string guitars. Not me and my Replacements tattoo. No big deal.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  What's that say?

• 34:27Yasi Salek?

  It says, "Darlin', when your time has come." It's one of my favorite Replacements songs.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  I'm always saying, "God rest his guts."

• 34:34Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, you can really hear it, and for some reason I hear it more in this like beautiful, pretty little number than I do, and there are other more full band kind of classic rock and roll vibe songs.

• 34:49Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't it kind of make you think like, that there's like an alternate timeline where The Replacements had the career of the Goo Goo Dolls? You know, like, The Replacements had like a huge hit and then wrote a song for a big film. Their songs are not just, not just as good, but arguably better, and I love the Goo Goo Dolls.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  They have more better songs.

• 35:14Yasi Salek?

  But it's just like timing and also probably, you know.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Their vibes.

• 35:20Yasi Salek?

  Their vibes, yeah, it was different. I mean, it's so different to what you aspire to when you're a band that comes out of that scene, that The Replacements came out at that time, and you're a band that, you know, is, yeah, it's, I think it's just like kind of different trajectories. But I'm just, I'm not really sure Paul Westerberg would have played the exact games that you had to play to.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I mean, were they in charge of, of the licensing of Can't Hardly Wait? When, why isn't that song in the movie?

• 35:49Yasi Salek?

  Such a good question.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Maybe they just don't have a good business mind.

• 35:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe they were just like, "That movie's trash." It's not, but I'm just imagining what they might have said.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I have no idea. Should have been in the movie.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Should have been.

• 36:02Yasi Salek?

  It's a fucking banger of a song.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Imagine walking into that, that party.

• 36:07Yasi Salek?

  The horns. I love that song. Anyway, sorry, this is a Goo Goo Dolls podcast. So Rob's like, "You've got gold here, let's work, let's work it out." And first he's like, "I think we need an orchestra."

• 36:21Yasi Salek?

  Just like injected it into my veins. And do you know who he hired to do the arrangement?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 36:27Yasi Salek?

  A guy called David Campbell. Someone else calls that man Dad. His name is Beck.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 36:34Yasi Salek?

  That is Beck's father, who did the orchestral arrangement on Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I didn't know that Beck had it like that.

• 36:42Yasi Salek?

  A father? Yeah, well, I think everyone ultimately has a father.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like he was, would have been born like behind the Viper Room.

• 36:51Yasi Salek?

  He came, he cracked out of an egg behind the Viper Room, the Silver Lake Lounge.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:58Yasi Salek?

  And then Rob is like, "Okay, beautiful, loving this cinematic, we need something else." And he told his engineer, this guy Alan Sides, he's like, "We need mandolin." And he's like, "Oh, I want Dean Parks." That was like a big session mandolin player. And, but by the time they remembered to get Dean Parks in there, it was 1 a.m. and the guy was gone, and he was like, "I'm not coming back till Tuesday or whatever." And he's like, "Okay, well, we need someone faster than Tuesday." And the second engineer is like, "I know a guy, why don't you hire him? His name is Tim Pierce." Tim Pierce played guitar on Bon Jovi's Runaway, Crowded Houses, Don't Dream It's Over, mostly fills, and the guitar on the bridge of Black or White by Michael Jackson.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Ooh, that's some good guitar.

• 37:46Yasi Salek?

  Not, not to get spicy and like into the weeds, but that's a fucking tune.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  That's my favorite Michael Jackson song. I was just talking about it with a friend.

• 37:57Yasi Salek?

  That whole album is honestly kind of wall-to-wall bangers. Dangerous.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Michael Jackson is just like.

• 38:04Yasi Salek?

  You think he was, he was a good, a good musician?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  I think he's a good musician and a great guy who never did anything weird.

• 38:10Yasi Salek?

  Michael Jackson innocent. Whitmer Thomas, printed in the newspapers.

• 38:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, I don't know about any of that, but I know he made some god-tier music, and Dangerous was one of my first CDs.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And I, I think he could dance pretty good, too.

• 38:26Yasi Salek?

  That's what people are saying.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:27Yasi Salek?

  Did you see the, did you see the biopic?

• 38:28Speaker 02

  I saw it twice.

• 38:30Yasi Salek?

  You loved it that much?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  I, I think it is one of the more entertaining movies, but it's, it's not good.

• 38:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was also quite entertained by it. Did I have a like physical reaction when the CGI monkey came on the screen? Yes.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:49Yasi Salek?

  It was not a positive reaction.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  No, no, it was.

• 38:52Yasi Salek?

  That was rough for me.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  That was bizarre.

• 38:54Yasi Salek?

  CGI Bubbles was really rough.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  And it's also weird, it's, even that to me is like perverse when they're playing in the room together. Gets the monkey to play Twister, I'm like, "You're fucking that monkey." "You're absolutely fucking that little monkey."

• 39:09Yasi Salek?

  No. No. Okay, we've, we've strayed so far from God's light. Okay, let's get it back to Iris. Tim Pierce is like the secret sauce, I think. Again, everyone is playing their part here. Johnny Resnick, one of the greatest songwriters of our lifetime, Rob Cabal, one of the greatest producers to ever exist, and then Tim Pierce comes in. So they hire him to come back, and they get to the studio, and this man, Tim Pierce, has brought 15 guitar amps, 15 guitars and like 100 pedals. And the Goo Goo Dolls are like, "The fuck, man?" They're like kind of, kind of bothered, a little bit.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 39:47Yasi Salek?

  Put out, you know? And Rob's like, "You guys just, let me go have a little chat with him." And the guy was like, "I just didn't like, you know, this is Rob Cabal, I didn't want to show up, like, like I was just gonna not do anything. I don't have, you know, like..." And Rob Cabal's like, "Look," to the Goo Goo Dolls, he's like, "Why don't we just let him cook, you know? It's not gonna cost any extra. If we don't like it, we'll just erase the tape." Honey, they did not erase the tape, because he cooked too close to the sun, almost. He, he plays the solo that you're talking about, the slide guitar solo is Tim Pierce.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, much needed.

• 40:25Yasi Salek?

  On a Les Paul hotcake. You know that guitar?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 40:29Yasi Salek?

  Me neither. Johnny Resnick said, "When I played this slide guitar solo, it sounded like fighting cats." And then Tim played it and it went up a level.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  There's a lot of nuance to that guitar.

• 40:40Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  You have to be gentle and firm at the same time.

• 40:44Yasi Salek?

  Like with a woman.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know all about that.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Uh, I can't play a slide guitar. I've tried. I actually tried two weeks ago in the studio.

• 41:06Yasi Salek?

  It's hard.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Shit, I know. I can't do a lot of southern stuff.

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  Can you grill? Is that southern? Can you barbecue?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  That's universal.

• 41:14Yasi Salek?

  Can you do fry?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Hell, no. I don't know how to do none of that.

• 41:17Yasi Salek?

  Can you fish?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I can fish.

• 41:20Yasi Salek?

  What else you guys got, Taba?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Uh, we can, we like to kill animals. I've never hunted. I've shot a gun one time when I was six and it flew me across the farm, like the kickback. Um, there's all kinds of other southern things that I don't really, uh, do.

• 41:38Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  But most of them I'm, I'm into.

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  I like to go to a Waffle House.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Love a Waffle House.

• 41:44Yasi Salek?

  Fuck that shit up. So good. One time, um, back in the, back when I was younger, like in my twenties, we would go on family vacations. We got into this weird time where my parents let, like, it was like, we would take turns picking where to go. And it was my turn. And I was like, I want to go to the south. And they were like, okay. And so, and I didn't really know enough. So we didn't go south enough, if you ask me. We flew into Atlanta and started there. So I feel like we should have gone. But I was in fucking heaven. I was like, we need to go to a Waffle House every day. It was one of the best times of my life.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And people do, do, it's so nice to go to Waffle Houses because you see like an old man, just that's his routine every day.

• 42:24Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 42:26Yasi Salek?

  You can kind of get that here at Bob's Big Boy, which I love.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:29Yasi Salek?

  It has a similar, uh, energy. Um, okay. So the Good Old Boys came around, Tim Pierce was my point. They were like, thank you for bringing all 15 guitars and all 15 amps and the 100 pedals because this sounds amazing. And now the song is done and it's gorgeous. It's the song that we know and love today. You know who heard it and said, I hate that. No, thank you?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Nicholas Cage?

• 42:55Yasi Salek?

  No. I don't know what Nicholas Cage thought of the song, uh, director Brad Silberson. He was like,

• 43:04Yasi Salek?

  no.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Clearly he doesn't know what he's doing. If you watch the movie.

• 43:09Yasi Salek?

  Apparently, allegedly. He was like, listen. He's, Seth is trying to get up to Lake Tahoe. He's hitchhiking. It's a 60s beatnik vibe. He want, he went to Rob and he's like, I want this song to have ukulele and bongos.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 43:30Yasi Salek?

  And Rob is like,

• 43:33Yasi Salek?

  okay, how, how about we compromise and we do a 12 string guitar, a stand up bass and maybe some light congas?

• 43:46Yasi Salek?

  And he goes, okay. And so you were saying earlier, you noticed something different about Iris in the film. And what is that?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  It's just that it's like a, more of an acoustic version. It's not the one that we all know.

• 43:57Yasi Salek?

  No. It's this version that Rob Cavallo made to placate Brad Silberson, that's with the 12 string guitar, which is why it's so, it's pretty, but it doesn't have the gravitas.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't get the juice.

• 44:08Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't got the juice.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  And that's something I didn't know until recently.

• 44:12Yasi Salek?

  When you rewatch City of Angels and your monthly rewatch of City of Angels. Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  When I want to feel alive. When I want to bleed just to feel alive.

• 44:29Yasi Salek?

  It's funny how many of the lyrics are so literal.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:33Yasi Salek?

  Of the movie, you know, like, I'd give up forever to touch you. Straight up, literal, pulled from the film.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  He was really clocking the movie. He's really paying attention.

• 44:43Yasi Salek?

  Saw it and went home. Also the little pun, you're the closest to heaven that I've ever been and I don't want to go home right now. Heaven is his home.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:52Yasi Salek?

  You get it.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:54Yasi Salek?

  So good. Everything's made to be broken. I just want you to know who I am.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  That's my Johnny.

• 45:10Yasi Salek?

  Woo. Also, when everything feels like the movie is a little winky. It's a real movie.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  It's just such a fucking good song. I mean, I know we're kind of making fun of it, but actually these lyrics, if I wrote one single one of them, I would quit.

• 45:23Yasi Salek?

  No, they're amazing. I mean, it, there is like, I think people mock it because it's so popular, but to, I think to make a hit this monstrous and this all consuming, it, the lyrics have to be broad like that. It doesn't mean they're not good lyrics. They're just very broad. Like, so anyone can listen to it and be like, that's me.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:45Yasi Salek?

  But I would give up forever to touch you.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  And it doesn't, I mean, and it helps that Johnny Resnick had that really cool haircut.

• 45:53Yasi Salek?

  How would you describe that Johnny Resnick haircut?

• 45:56Speaker 02

  It's like an emo mullet. It's like, didn't, it, he's the only one who ever had it.

• 46:02Yasi Salek?

  There's like some balayage, like some highlights.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:05Yasi Salek?

  Going on.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  When I was a kid, when I first saw this video, I remember the day I saw it.

• 46:12Yasi Salek?

  When, when he's sitting on the tower, kind of mimicking.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Every time I imagine him writing that song, I imagine him up in that tower.

• 46:19Yasi Salek?

  He sat up in that tower. He certainly was in maybe the Sunset Tower. He was at an LA hotel. I'm not sure. I don't know if it was a Sunset Tower.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Could have been the same, looking through the telescope, watching the movie through the telescope or something. But he's wearing that red leather jacket and he's got that hair. And I said to my mom, my brother was in, my big brother was in the room and I said, uh, can you take me to the, uh, haircut place? I want to get that haircut.

• 46:42Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  And my brother goes, um, that's not a haircut. He just grew his hair long. And I was like, okay. Well, immediately felt was like defeated.

• 46:52Yasi Salek?

  I feel your brother saved you a little bit.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Oh, if I went to school in Alabama with that haircut, I was at a new school too, it'd have been over for me. But I wanted to look like that.

• 47:04Yasi Salek?

  I know AI is bad, but now all I want to do is go put your photo into AI and Johnny Resnick photo into AI and be like, give him the haircut.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  You can do that. I think that's what it's for.

• 47:15Yasi Salek?

  In my, yeah, in my estimation is for that. It's for those videos that I keep seeing on Twitter because I am a boomer that involve a cat coming to wake someone up by playing an instrument.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:27Yasi Salek?

  Have you seen the one where the cat comes to the porch multiple times, playing a different instrument? I cry. I like cry laughing.

• 47:36Yasi Salek?

  And I'm sorry, I, I watched that and I'm like, AI is good. I'll invest in it. If it's the cat coming to play the cymbal.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Just those things? There's one of Michael Jackson working at a grocery store. I think it's funny that we were in, clearly this will happen, but we were all like, oh, it's Terminator. The machines are going to take over. But no, it's just people making Michael Jackson working at a grocery store.

• 47:55Yasi Salek?

  Grocery store, supermarket and a cat playing the accordion on, on the front porch.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  It's like a raccoon making a hot dog on a grill.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  But then yes, eventually the machines will take over and we'll all die.

• 48:06Yasi Salek?

  This is how they trick us in the beginning. They're like, look, it's just a cat playing accordion. And you're like, uh-oh.

• 48:15Speaker 00

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• 48:39Speaker 03

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• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  Let me ask you, is this your favorite Googoo Dolls song?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, as much as I wanna say like Name.

• 49:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  I think it's this.

• 49:44Yasi Salek?

  You think it's Iris?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I listened to it. I listened to it on a road trip from Alabama back to LA a few weeks ago. Like, I went and found it and played it and listened to it.

• 49:55Yasi Salek?

  Were you having sort of an introspective?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  I don't know if I've ever had an introspective thought as an adult while listening to this song, but I have, I have like broken down this song and like we were saying earlier, like I think it's bizarre that, I would like to listen to it on the radio in 1999 again.

• 50:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like remember how it hit those times.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Well, and also just to see how do they deal with the big instrumental break?

• 50:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Is there a radio edit, you know?

• 50:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Name has that too. It's right before the very end where it's that he just repeats and I won't tell him, you know? Like, there's like that instrumental break. It's maybe a hallmark of his songwriting.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  And what's crazy is if you, you think of Googoo Dolls, you think of this song. And sometimes this song overshadows all of their other hits.

• 50:47Yasi Salek?

  It's not my favorite.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  What is it?

• 50:49Yasi Salek?

  My favorite is a tie between Slide and Black Balloon. Maybe a slightly edged out by Black Balloon. Maybe it's Black Balloon makes us fly.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  I listened to their top 10 songs the other day on Spotify.

• 51:01Yasi Salek?

  You heard Black Balloon?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Black Balloon.

• 51:03Yasi Salek?

  Goes so hard.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Slide.

• 51:05Yasi Salek?

  Slide is fucking incredible.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Is Slide the next album?

• 51:07Yasi Salek?

  Slide is Dizzy Up the Girl. So Iris, we didn't say, but Iris ends up on Dizzy Up the Girl. And Dizzy Up the Girl is produced by Rob Cavallo and becomes like a fucking massive hit. I mean, it has Iris, it has Slide, it has Black Balloon, it has Broadway. Broadway's talk tonight. And then it has this really pretty song called Acoustic Number Three. It's a really good album.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  It's a great album. I had it.

• 51:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, sure. I had the CD.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  I remember playing it and kinda moshing around on my couch. I think I got this in like a heart shaped box EP.

• 51:41Yasi Salek?

  Hmm. You didn't go full Inaudito.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  I just would get whatever there was. We didn't have a lot of options down there. So I would also usually get a CD that just looked cool.

• 51:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I did that all the time.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  I'd be like, oh, it's a guy with a mohawk. Okay.

• 51:57Yasi Salek?

  Totally. That's how I got Sponge Rotting Pinata was because I thought the cover looked cool with all the candy corn on it. And guess what? It was fucking cool.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 52:05Yasi Salek?

  That album rips.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  I gotta get into that.

• 52:08Yasi Salek?

  You've never heard Rotting Pinata by Sponge?

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Mm-mm.

• 52:11Yasi Salek?

  Sixteen Candles, Plowed?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe I have.

• 52:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Are you a little younger than me? I think you're a little bit younger than me.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 52:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you just nodded real fast like that. You're like, yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Well, I've listened to your podcast, so I know how old you are. I'm 38, so.

• 52:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you are. You're six years younger than me. You're quite a bit younger than me, so that makes sense. You would have, I was, you know, at a different age when this, this Iris situation came out.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  I think I was 10.

• 52:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so I was fully driving a car.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  And you're probably feeling the feelings you're supposed to feel listening to the song, whereas I was like, I want that haircut. I wanna know what love is.

• 52:47Yasi Salek?

  I wanna know what love is. Yeah, but that's like the beauty of these songs that like, I also remember being 10 or 11 and having like completely inappropriate reactions to songs, like, like listening to the Afghan Wigs when I was 11. I mean, like, yeah, I fucking understand it. And I'm like, what I understand about an alcoholic situation ship, you know, like, come on now.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  I think this is why 10 year olds should be able to vote. It's because they're curious in a way that grownups aren't.

• 53:14Yasi Salek?

  They're more open minded.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  They're willing to, to think things through.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:19Yasi Salek?

  Um, I would, I think it couldn't, it couldn't make things worse.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  If we opened it up to 10 year olds, it honestly might improve things.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  And they're not allowed to use social media, so it would be them watching some interviews on CNN or Fox News or whatever they're gonna watch.

• 53:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if 10 year olds watch Fox News.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Well, they'd be, they'd have to at school. They're being forced to be educated.

• 53:41Yasi Salek?

  Civics class, which again, I don't think we have that anymore.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 53:46Yasi Salek?

  Do you wanna hear, uh, the, all the songs that hit number one during the summer of Iris? Including Iris, but not limited to?

• 53:56Speaker 02

  So it was 1998?

• 53:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Summer 1998. I had just moved to Gulf Shores, Alabama from Birmingham. What was on the radio?

• 54:05Yasi Salek?

  You were about, you went to your new school.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, was it Eve 6? Was that the next year? Like, was that?

• 54:11Yasi Salek?

  I was on my pad, I was over the line.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Was it Unblue?

• 54:15Yasi Salek?

  Da ba dee ba da ba da. Um, no, it was Aerosmith, I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing from the major motion picture.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Armageddon.

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  Armageddon. It's been one week since you looked at me.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:28Yasi Salek?

  I love that song. Took it a Chinese, a Chinese chicken. Yeah, it's a fucking banger. Brandy and Monica, The Boy Is Mine.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Oh shit, yeah, this is a moment in my life for sure.

• 54:38Yasi Salek?

  Some of these, I don't remember R. Kelly and Celine. Oh, no, I do. I'm your angel, you're my man. So that was, what a, what a pure and more beautiful time.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  It was. I just turning on the TV and hoping to God this video came on.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  When did you get into your pop punk? If you were like?

• 55:01Speaker 02

  It was right here.

• 55:02Yasi Salek?

  Right here?

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Right, right then and there. I was just getting into skating and watching videos and like figuring out about those songs. My brother's your age and so he had good taste. He was in a cover band called Toxic Toothpaste and.

• 55:15Yasi Salek?

  Fucking god to your name. It's so good.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  And they would cover Screech and Weasel, Pennywise, Blink. Um, and so I just wanted him to like me and then he, you know, I remember Limp Bizkit came out and with the Faith cover and.

• 55:31Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I wanna have faith.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  And I was like.

• 55:33Yasi Salek?

  An abomination, that song.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was listening to it and loving it. And my brother was like, you're not allowed to listen to this.

• 55:38Yasi Salek?

  Your brother was cool. He was like steering you away from Johnny Resnick haircut. He was steering you away from bad, uh, rap metal.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  And him and my cousin Wilks from the special.

• 55:48Yasi Salek?

  Sunglasses on the back of the neck.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Who used to be a skater punk. He was the first one to get into it out of my friends and family.

• 55:54Yasi Salek?

  What do you think happened?

• 55:56Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think he got into a lot of.

• 55:59Yasi Salek?

  Fuck shit and he turned his life around.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Kinda turned his life around.

• 56:02Yasi Salek?

  Good for him.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  As a teenager, really, he was like, he's been a professional fisherman since he was like 18 years old.

• 56:10Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so.

• 56:12Yasi Salek?

  It's like a real job. We don't have those anymore. Like, I don't know anybody that has a real job that's on an email job.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:17Yasi Salek?

  Or like, podcast job. Like, just the stupidest, most useless jobs on the planet. Love and respect also yours. Like, what are we gonna do when the Armageddon comes?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  I'd be.

• 56:28Yasi Salek?

  You're gonna make people laugh? I'm gonna tell them music facts? We need your brother, or your cousin, I mean.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I keep thinking I'll just like, if I could right now, like, just like, uh, go like junk, jumping up.

• 56:40Yasi Salek?

  Detonate the vest?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Maybe I'm just overwhelmed.

• 56:45Yasi Salek?

  You're doing a lot of press, babe. I'm really sorry. I mean, on one hand, it's like really cool because your special is popular and shout out to the god, Aloy, he's good at his job.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:54Yasi Salek?

  And people like you.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  I, I love doing this.

• 56:58Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  And I like the videos that I've, for the most part, I don't like the clothes I'm wearing and I don't like my posture, but, and people like those videos and they watch them, but.

• 57:09Yasi Salek?

  Do people, okay, let me push back. Do people like those videos or are people just like tormented by lack of attention span and dopamine addiction now and the only thing they can stomach is watching a 30 second thing where someone guesses songs or like, as my friend Patrick Sandberg put it in his amazing Substack, Perforneilia, do spicy chicken torture rituals? Like, do people like that or have we just created an environment in which this is all the, it's like, it's, is this not lightly idiocracy? And I'm not saying what I do is fucking Kafka, okay?

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Essentially, you're doing a long form interview, research.

• 57:51Yasi Salek?

  I'm trying.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Thing. That's like a real thing. I think that, yeah, people's brains are rotten and I also wonder now, like if people will go, oh, I saw your track star. And instead of going, I saw your track star.

• 58:06Yasi Salek?

  I do kinda like the track star, or I won't lie. I think it's fun because I like songs and I like seeing people talk about them.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  But I don't know if they're going, I saw your track star, which made me then go watch your hour long special on a, on HBO. I don't think, I don't know if that's a one to one like it used to be. When I put out my last special, none of this existed in.

• 58:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  In 2020, which is crazy. That wasn't that long ago.

• 58:28Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  So like the social media campaign is, it's interesting and, and I don't know if it necessarily works. I, I like a lot of, I like doing it. It's fun and I'll do anything to get people to watch Terminal Crew of Dudes on HBO Max.

• 58:42Yasi Salek?

  Streaming now.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  But I, I don't know if it necessarily drives people there and, uh, it'd be great if it was like the old days where you just do a late night show and that's kind of it. And you hope everything works and people watch it. But now also there's a billion standup specials and there's a billion new songs and it's like, it's hard with album drops now to try to.

• 59:08Yasi Salek?

  To break through.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  It's, it's like, it's a different ballgame and I do wish that it would all die and, um, I wish that social media would burn. I think we've had a good run.

• 59:20Yasi Salek?

  We had a good run, babe.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  And we all know how to find our communities and our support groups for, for whichever, wherever we feel that, you know, we feel safe and all that stuff. So now we can fucking kill it and let's see how long, um.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Until, uh, I'm curious what you think. If social media died.

• 59:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  And if you like, like you can still have YouTube, but it has to be a video. It can't be like a short.

• 59:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  All the, the short attention span stuff died.

• 59:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Uh, how long would it take for people's brains to like?

• 59:53Yasi Salek?

  Re-

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Watch a movie or go see a movie in the theater?

• 59:57Yasi Salek?

  Be able to tolerate that length of attention.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or just get excited to leave the house and buy a ticket.

• 1:00:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  And people complain, movie tickets are so expensive. They're 20 bucks. When I was a kid, a movie costs.

• 1:00:10Yasi Salek?

  Five bucks for me, I mean, seven, maybe.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like eight to 10 bucks. And I'm like, inflation, that sounds about right. 20.

• 1:00:18Yasi Salek?

  It's not quite right, but yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Yasi Salek?

  It's gotten a little more than inflation, but-

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  But also nobody's watching movies anymore.

• 1:00:23Yasi Salek?

  That's part of it. Yeah.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  So go see a movie, please. But also we need to make better movies.

• 1:00:28Yasi Salek?

  We're, we're like full gone into like old man yelling at the cloud hours. Um.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  You're right. You're right. But let's all burn, let's burn it all down.

• 1:00:37Yasi Salek?

  Let's burn it all down, start from scratch. I, I kind of, again, are my hands clean? No. Am I populating fucking Instagram.com on the weekly with five clips of this show that nobody cares about? Correct.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Yasi.

• 1:00:51Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Care.

• 1:00:52Yasi Salek?

  I know what time it is. I know what time it is.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  No, I'm dealing with the same thing at HBO. You gotta post clips. And I'm like, we were already talking about it. But I'm like, ain't nobody's watching these clips.

• 1:01:02Yasi Salek?

  And it's like, but you know what happens? People do watch the clips and it's the exact wrong people. It's the exact people you do not wish to watch the clip who are like, this woman's voice is so fucking annoying. And you're like, okay.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  He's trying too hard or they'll go, for me, he's trying too hard, it'll go, uh, uh, why is, why'd you raise the price? And it's like-

• 1:01:22Yasi Salek?

  Talk about HBO, totally. Totally. Um, that have, I once had an Essence feature and it was like right around when they were having like tariff problems or whatever. And like every comment on the thing was like, why are the tariff costs so high? Where's my order?

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Dot, dot, dot. Yasi's great though.

• 1:01:40Yasi Salek?

  I was like, um, all that, to tie it back into this, I do think, you know, everyone's always been up against the same things. Like, you know, Johnny Resnick had to make some choices. He had to go on the subway takes of his time, which was to, you know, do a movie soundtrack or go on a major label or whatever.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Right. Back then, it, there was such a thing as selling out.

• 1:02:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I don't know. But by that point, do you think there was?

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think music industry was peak, I think in 1999.

• 1:02:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  So there was, yeah.

• 1:02:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Because you could still make money and have that integrity of being on an independent label. But I think it was the time when people were like, like, punk can be on any, like, it would be nice to make a living, like more of a-

• 1:02:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  More money. And also Johnny Resnick's songs and the Goo Goo Dolls were just like so pop.

• 1:02:41Yasi Salek?

  Those were, yeah, those were begging to be on mainstream radio.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  So maybe a major label is the same thing as me doing hot chicken talk or the thing.

• 1:02:53Yasi Salek?

  Have you done that one yet?

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  For the lady. Uh, no.

• 1:02:57Yasi Salek?

  I feel like I've, um, torpedoed any, uh, chance of me being booked on any of these and that's okay.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is, is you're aware, I'm aware, they're definitely aware.

• 1:03:08Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like every, we all know what time it is.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Yasi Salek?

  We all know, we all know how we're contributing to the dissolution of society.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Letterboxd is the only.

• 1:03:19Yasi Salek?

  For now.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Everybody go, uh, review my special on Letterboxd.

• 1:03:24Yasi Salek?

  Give it five stars and a heart and a little text.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  And make sure to log it too.

• 1:03:29Yasi Salek?

  Log it on your Letterboxd.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Yasi Salek?

  Um, what's the last great movie you saw? I know you're a big fan of the big picture. So here's my, here's my big picture moment for you.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Last great movie? A new movie?

• 1:03:41Yasi Salek?

  Sure. It can be any movie, I think.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Well, the last great movie I saw was, uh,

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  oh my God, I'm forgetting the name. The Jim Jarmusch movie in New Orleans where they go, Tom Waits and the, the gang goes to prison.

• 1:03:56Yasi Salek?

  Oh my God. Um, Down by Law.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Down by Law.

• 1:03:59Yasi Salek?

  It's one of my favorite movies.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Yasi Salek?

  With, uh, Benini, with Liberta Benini. Oh, what a fucking film. It's so funny.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Watched it in the middle of the day in my bed with the lights, the light pouring through reflect, I could see my reflection in the TV the whole time. And I was still just like, this is so-

• 1:04:17Yasi Salek?

  That's how my house is too. And I have not solved it. Like even though I got curtains, like no matter what, if I want to watch something during the day, there's reflection on the TV. It's dark. It's probably trying to stop me from doing that.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Yasi Salek?

  It gives like, every time I do that, I feel extremely unemployed, like DeVry College hours, you know, like, I'm like, feel like the DeVry College ads are gonna come on and tell me to like, get my ass a job.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is a weird, it's very like at home faking sick kind of vibe.

• 1:04:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay. Down by Law. That's a great recommendation.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  I was also just shooting a movie that was kind of stressful.

• 1:04:48Yasi Salek?

  Oh, how's your acting career going?

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  It's going all right.

• 1:04:51Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  It's going okay.

• 1:04:53Yasi Salek?

  Good.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Yasi Salek?

  Give a shout out to Olivia Gerke, our, our homegirl.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and I would watch Robocop every night.

• 1:05:02Yasi Salek?

  I saw that you put it in your top four on Letterboxd.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Oh my, oh yeah. Robocop is just the best. And I love that movie, but I found that it's like the most comforting movie.

• 1:05:11Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  And I would watch it on, uh, every night on my laptop, uh, to kind of chill out.

• 1:05:17Yasi Salek?

  I don't think I've seen that film in 25 to 30 years.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  It's a perfect movie.

• 1:05:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  And it means a lot more than you think it does. It's, it's deeper than you think it is. Like if you just remember, oh, it's a robot cop. There's more to it than that.

• 1:05:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Robocop remake starring Whitmer Thomas, when?

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  I would never do it. I think I, I love it and cherish it too much, even if they were like, here's your big break. They already tried that and it wasn't good.

• 1:05:41Yasi Salek?

  Oh, they did.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  But if they were like, I think they're making a TV show right now too. But if they were like, here's your big break, Robocop, we want you to be Alex Murphy in Robocop. I would say no.

• 1:05:52Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's where you draw the line morally, that you're like, I will not sully this film.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  I wouldn't do it unless Peter Weller was in it as Robocop. I'd be happy to play a different character. I even have a Robocop idea for a movie. Uh, uh, but it has to have Peter Weller. He's the reason that movie and Paul Verhoeven. It's a great film. There's so much humanity and heart. And, uh, it makes me emotional watching. I cry every time at the, uh, at a few parts of that movie.

• 1:06:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Wow. Whitmer Thomas, what a beautiful place for us to-

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  It's almost like Johnny Resnick's or the Goo Goo Dolls' Iris. It's, I'd say equal as far as-

• 1:06:30Yasi Salek?

  Perfect movie, perfect song, perfect, uh, Goo Goo Dolls playing Iris in the pouring rain in Buffalo, New York in 2004.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  And you know what? I think I'm gonna edit, um, Iris into the-

• 1:06:42Yasi Salek?

  The special?

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  No, into Robocop.

• 1:06:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Actually have a funny idea now.

• 1:06:47Yasi Salek?

  That, well, that's funny. That is, you did bring me to the last thing I wanted to say, which is, did you find it surprising that Iris had like this random resurgence? It is not random, but like, I feel like, don't you feel like last year, all of a sudden it was everywhere?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  I think it-

• 1:07:05Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't it? It was like a TikTok, uh-

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  I think TikTok kids are sort of desperate for this kind of thing.

• 1:07:11Yasi Salek?

  Like what? Good songs?

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Just like a guy being, being like authentically sort of, uh, navel gazy or sad on a guitar instead of being kind of performative.

• 1:07:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  And, uh, being able to sing in a, in a way that, I guess he is sort of doing a version of Paul Westerberg, but it's not really an impression. I feel like a lot of singer songwriters now are doing some sort of impression of another person.

• 1:07:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Also Phoebe Bridgers like covered it in lockdown. I feel like-

• 1:07:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Taylor Swift covered it even before that, like 2011. She covered it on stage at Madison Square Garden and brought Johnny Resnick on stage with her.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  That's brilliant. That's important.

• 1:07:51Yasi Salek?

  I love the new Phoebe Bridgers album. So just letting you guys know. Okay. Now I remember. So I was trying to Google why the TikTok trend happened. It was like me in the nineties or something. It was, it was a whole, it was like a thing. You remember? And then people would set these like slideshow photos to Iris. So it became this like huge thing last year.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  And so many people, uh, look great.

• 1:08:15Yasi Salek?

  In the nineties.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  And now. It goes to show how like, kind of, that people aged well, like skincare worked.

• 1:08:25Yasi Salek?

  There was a, there's another internet thing, right? About that, how like randomly millennials look so much better for their age and zoomers look so much worse or something. This is like a thing.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Really? Yeah.

• 1:08:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Makes sense. Wear sunscreen, I guess.

• 1:08:38Yasi Salek?

  It's like that other song that was-

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Same. Was that the same year?

• 1:08:42Yasi Salek?

  Um, I think, no, I think it was a little bit later.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 1:08:46Yasi Salek?

  The, the Baz Luhrmann, wasn't it Baz Luhrmann?

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Was it the same time as Chris Gaines?

• 1:08:52Yasi Salek?

  Real heads don't remember Chris Gaines.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  I remember driving home from school and hearing sunscreen and Chris Gaines.

• 1:08:58Yasi Salek?

  It was Baz Luhrmann. Everyone's free to wear sunscreen. Oh yeah. 98.7, the year before. You're so right. What was your graduation song?

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:09:08Yasi Salek?

  You don't remember?

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  I'm sure it was like Dave Matthews Band or-

• 1:09:12Yasi Salek?

  It's a great, great band.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know. I was not, I wasn't really participating. I, I went to graduation. I, I remember dropping my diploma when he handed it to me and it was embarrassing. And, uh, then, um, I forgot to tell my parents it was happening or something like that. And then my-

• 1:09:29Yasi Salek?

  You forgot to tell your parents about your graduation ceremony?

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then I, my friend Clay's mom took us to Hooters afterwards.

• 1:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Pretty awesome.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  I think I was like heartbroken. I had a girlfriend in senior year who would cheat on me every other week. And that was probably one of the weeks she cheated on me. And that's probably all I was really thinking about. I, I wish at the time, I was probably listening to Iris.

• 1:09:50Yasi Salek?

  Crying your eyes out.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wish I could write this for her so she'd love me.

• 1:09:54Yasi Salek?

  So she'd stop cheating with me.

• 1:09:57Yasi Salek?

  You're too nice. You're too nice of a guy. Whatever. You're too pure for this world. Mine was time of your life by Green Day, in case anyone was wondering.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Oh, well, see, that's cool.

• 1:10:05Yasi Salek?

  It was-

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  But it also makes sense.

• 1:10:06Yasi Salek?

  Just lined up timing wise.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, Whitmer, this has been a real delight. I hope you had a nice time.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I love this podcast and I love the Ringer network and I love, uh, uh, the big picture and, um, rewatchables and, and Van.

• 1:10:24Yasi Salek?

  Van Lathan is a wonderful, wonderful person and podcaster.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  I get to meet all of them one day and I hope that they, um, if they have a bad review of something I do, just don't talk about it.

• 1:10:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Like don't, don't podcast about it.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Unless I'm just a small part in it.

• 1:10:42Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Then it's okay.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Yasi Salek?

  They seem to love weapons. So you're doing okay so far.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, you guys, come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 1:11:02Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Whitmer Thomas. Watch his new special, Terminal Crew of Dudes, on HBO now. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Cornet. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and recorded by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, Producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and the wonderful Rob Cavallo. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip, the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.